Bitcoin.com Podcast: Eddy Travia of Coinsilium

On the latest episode of the Bitcoin.com Podcast, our host Zach Doty sat down with Eddy Travia of Coinsilium to discuss his firm’s portfolio of companies, including Rootstock and Magnr.

Also read: The Bitcoin.com Podcast: Voorhees on the ShapeShift Hack

Coinsilium: Helping Bitcoin Startups

Eddy Travia

Self-described as “a fintech company, vertically integrated in the blockchain/decentralised network technology space,” Coinsilium invests in Bitcoin and blockchain startups that they think offer valuable services to the fintech space.

Coinsilium Co-Found and CEO Eddy Travia is a long-time member of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency community. He became interested in Bitcoin in April 2013 after conversations with Hakim Mamoni, as well as following the infamous Cyprus bank bail-in.

Travia was a founding member of Seedcoin, an early Bitcoin startup incubator. Seedcoin “funded several pioneers now offering well-known products and services.”

Will Rootstock Put Ethereum and The DAO out of Business?

Rootstock was the opening topic of the podcast, with Zach asking Travia if the Bitcoin-based smart contracts platform will steal Ethereum’s thunder.

As a smart contracts platform based on Bitcoin’s blockchain, some have speculated that the success of this project would lead to less emphasis placed on Ethereum, as the network effect would make Bitcoin-based smart contracts more appealing.

Travia, describing Rootstock as part of Coinsilium’s more “blockchain oriented” portfolio, says that Rootstock and Ethereum have a lot of similarities, but that he views them as complementary platforms rather than competitors.

“I’m not sure it’s really a one-on-one competition,” Travia says. “We feel that both can coexist, we also like Ethereum a lot. . .I think both will work together and hopefully coexist very well.”

In fact, Travia notes that applications built on Rootstock can be compatible with Ethereum if written in Solidity, “an object-oriented” programming language used to write Ethereum contracts.

Zach and Travia discussed several other companies in Coinsilium’s portfolio, including SatoshiPay, bitSIM, and Magnr.

All of these projects focus on making Bitcoin more usable in mainstream finance, either by making access to the digital currency more accessible or by bringing modern financial technology to the developing world.

BitSIM, for example, is a bitcoin wallet that utilizes SIM card technology in mobile phones, allowing people without Internet access to store and use bitcoin on their cell phones.

If you’d like to get the details of Zach and Eddy Travia’s conversation, you can listen to the full podcast here:

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